Weather dampens fair

Don’t take this as a guilt trip, but your decision not to buy an elephant ear at the fair this year may end up costing a struggling student a college scholarship.

Cold and rainy weather kept fair attendance below last year, which was a very bad year. Final estimates couldn’t be determined until after the gates closed Sunday.

When crowds don’t come, nonprofit vendors make less and thus have less to support food banks, school playgrounds and scholarship funds.

Sunny skies and fluffy clouds highlighted the last two days, but it wasn’t enough to help vendors recover by Sunday, the last day of the 2004 Spokane County Interstate Fair.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Bob Jayne, restaurant manager of the Spokane Valley Kiwanis booth Sunday.

By the end of Saturday, their sales were down $20,000 from last year.

“Usually we’re around $58,000,” Jayne said. “Now we’re at $37,000.”

At the close of Saturday night, gatekeepers had counted a little more than 163,000 visitors, about 20,000 less than last year at that point. Sunday’s crowds, estimated at a light 25,000, all but guaranteed this was not a blue-ribbon year for attendance. Last year’s attendance was 211,436.

Dolly Hughes, director of the fair and expo center, blamed the cold and wet weather.

“We just had a really great fair,” Hughes said. “It’s unfortunate the weatherman decided to save it for the last weekend. I’m told this is the most days the fair has ever had moisture for 30 or 40 years.”

Next year’s theme will be sunnier and likely have something to do with sunflowers, Hughes said straight-faced.

To boost crowds, the fair offered free Sunday admission with Saturday’s admission, the first time they’ve done that. It was an effort to help the vendors, Hughes said.

“We have all these vendors who have paid to be here, the nonprofits who are here to make money,” Hughes said.

A third of the food booths are run by nonprofit organizations like the Spokane Valley Kiwanis, which puts between $15,000 and $20,000 of funds raised toward college student scholarships. The Freeman school district just received new playgrounds from the Kiwanis, which also helps the food bank.

“We’ll have to cut things way back,” Hughes said. As fairs go, “This is probably the worst year we’ve ever had.”

The El Katif Shriners workers said sales of ducks for the annual Shriners duck race next week at Riverfront Park were down too. The race will be held next Sunday. The Shriners, of course, help children.

This final Sunday, although sunny, drew half the crowds of the fair’s first Sunday, said Lorna Schieche.

“I don’t know if people are running out of money or what,” Schieche said.

Sales of corn and baked potatoes were down about 40 percent from last year for the Spokane East Rotary, said past president Remy Osso.

“All of it was due to the weather,” Osso said, wrapping foil around a steaming potato.

Usually, they clear $15,000 after expenses. What helps is that the Washington State Potato Association donates the spuds, he said. This year, Osso wasn’t sure if they’d break even.

“We may have to try and get another event going to make up the difference,” Osso said. “It means we’ll be restricted in our giving.”

There was a silver lining. Not all was lost like tears in rain.

Anyone set up under a tent did very well.

Rhys Thomas, a juggling comedic performer set up under a tent by the kiddie rides, said he’d never seen so many continually full performances. Maybe his new bit of hoisting a child above the stage in a harness and announcing the new piñata routine, helped. Crowds in Spokane loved that joke, he said.

“We were surprised how often our tent was filled,” Thomas said, a playing card whizzing by his head from a fellow juggler.

As fairgrounds go, Thomas said, Spokane’s site is among the state’s best.

“It’s parallel to Puyallup,” he said.

Now there’s a fair slogan.